Case in point: I've used a bit of Meteor, and I'm not really a fan of it, although it's an interesting idea. Should I just star the project anyway to get the donation to happen?
I'd say you should only star the project if you genuinely like Meteor enough to star it.
If you're still on the fence about Meteor but like the cause, I'd encourage you to donate directly to CodeNow at codenow.org.
Not trying to troll, just genuinely interested in how you guys approached this.
Either way, it does seem like a smart "growth hack".
Yes. Stars already don't matter :) Stars mean visibility, but are a really poor metric for legitimacy.
We picked GH stars because it's a transparent public number. Also because it's a relatively lightweight ask that still means a little more than a retweet or FB like. This campaign is about the existing Meteor community reaching out and encouraging new people into our community, and raising money for CodeNow is in the same spirit of accessibility and sharing.
Like Bahamut's comment shows, people do hesitate to star something they aren't actually interested in, and that's good; we want people to actually make an effort to tell their friends why they should check out Meteor. And then, if they succeed, it only takes 1-2 clicks for the friend to register their interest and get counted as part of the campaign.